This trope, like several other Guns and Gunplay Tropes, originated in Westerns. It was possible to do this relatively safely with the gun commonly used in the period, the single-action revolver, because it takes two actions to fire it: first cock the hammer, then pull the trigger.

With the earliest revolvers this actually had a practical purpose: primitive cartridges tended to leave "fouling" (powder residue, pieces of the casing etc.) in the barrel and firing chamber. Spinning helped shake them loose so they wouldn't accumulate and jam the weapon; but with any gun made after the mid-1800s this is completely unnecessary.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Braham of One Piece seemed fond of doing this whenever he had an excuse to do so.

Justice from Afro Samurai does this before holstering one of his revolvers, which apparently results in a Diagonal CutOff with His Head! for Afro's father. He used a sword wielded by his hidden third arm, but we don't learn that till later.

In the spinoff/prequel Soul Eater NOT we see Liz gun-twirling as well. Like the Kid's tonfa grip, it's probably safe enough when the gun is a sentient being that won't fire when you don't want it to (and whose shots can be "pulled").

Comic Books

In one Lucky Luke album, one guy tries this — and shoots himself in the hand.

In the album The Klondike, Soapy Smith had the habit of doing this. One gag involved Smith trying to shoot a Mountie only for Luke to shoot his gun, causing it to start twirling.

In the same album, Luke and Waldo like to make an enemy do this at gunpoint. Especially Smith, whose finger eventually swells up to the point of making him unable to shoot.

Vengeance features rookie hero and Young Gun the Ultimate Nullifier, who wields dual hip-holstered pistols that temporarily depower anyone hit by their bullets. He likes to spin them when he's bored, when he's trying to make a point, or when he just wants to look cool.

Scrooge twirls two guns at once, before aiming and shooting on the spot.

When Scrooge happens upon Wyatt Earp in Alaska, the famous gunslinger introduces himself by twirling his gun. Scrooge responds by doing the same thing with his #1 Dime, causing Earp to lose his cool as he realizes just whohe tried to impress.

Taken to a logical extreme in the scene where Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo have a competition to see who can do the most elaborate Gun Spin. After Ringo does a flawless and incredibly elaborate session of twirling, Doc parodies him by using a tin cup to mirror all of Johnny's tricks, causing everyone around (even Ringo's friends) to laugh and applaud at the display.

Later in the film there's a scene on the street where a confrontation is brewing between the Cowboys and the Earps. Wyatt Earp is in the middle of arresting the leader of the Cowboys and is in a stand off with Ike Clanton when Ike's younger brother Billy tries to stop Wyatt. While this is going on Doc comes out to back up Wyatt, and Billy mocks Doc, saying he's just The Piano Player and that Doc's probably seeing double because of how much he's had to drink. To add onto things, as Clanton says this he menacingly draws a large knife. Doc responds by pulling a second pistol and spinning them in opposite directions at the same time, (a very difficult trick) accompanied by the awesome one liner "I have two guns, one for each of ya." Young Billy Clanton decides not to try his luck with the drunken piano player after all. Watch the scene here.

This is a Character Tic of Alex Murphy in RoboCop (1987). Murphy does this as he copies a move from his son's favorite TV show. He explains to his partner Anne Lewis that he does this so he can be a role model. After Murphy is killed by Clarence Boddicker and his gang, Bob Morton and his development team at OCP seize his body and transform Murphy into RoboCop. As part of the process, Murphy's memory is erased. However, certain elements of Murphy's past remain in RoboCop. When his sharpshooting skills are demonstrated by Morton at the police firing range, the other officers including Lewis all eagerly watch him. After he finishes shooting, we see RoboCop twirl his custom gun on his right finger before putting it on a leg holster. Lewis later uses it to identify RoboCop as the late Murphy.note The gun safety issue is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that Murphy only does that trick after unloading the weapon. When he's doing it with Lewis prior to chasing down Boddicker, he reloads his pistol afterward. When he does it for the first time as RoboCop, he has just emptied his pistol at the firing range.

Also applied later as a Tear Jerker when RoboCop/Murphy goes to his old house, and has a flashback to his son asking him to perform said trick.

An almost-Throw It In moment in The Mexican has Brad Pitt's character drop his gun when he tries to do it. (He actually did do it by accident on set, but that wasn't the take they used in the film—just the inspiration.)

Most famously in the Rooster Cogburn movies, John Wayne used a Winchester lever-action rifle with an enlarged cocking lever, allowing him to recock by spinning the gun one-handed.

In an homage to the above, the Terminator used a shotgun with an identical action in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The armorer provided a regular Winchester 1887 and a modified one; when Arnold grabbed the wrong one to do some flip-cocking for a scene, he nearly broke three fingers.

Subverted in a western where Kirk Douglas' character shows off his fancy pistol twirling and shooting skills for a young cowboy. Impressed, he asks if Kirk can teach him to do that. Kirk replies, "Hell no! All that fancy twirling never saved anyone!"

In The Outlaw Josey Wales, Eastwood's character uses a trick called the "Road Agent's Spin" or "Border Roll" to gun down two men who have him cornered. He holds out his revolvers butt-first, slipping his index fingers into the trigger guards, then flips/twirls them to get into position and fires.

In Planet Terror, El Wray demonstrates his skills by twirling a pair of revolvers in various ways. Considering that the film is a throwback to 80s Grindhouse action films, it's pretty much justified.

Used as a gag in House, when a bat-winged skeletal monster seizes Roger's shotgun and flies off with it. Rather than claw his face off as expected for such a bestial-looking critter, the creature performs a Gun Twirl with it and then Shoots The Rope from which Roger is suspended.

WALL•E: EVE twirls her Arm Cannon before "holstering" it the first time she fires at poor WALL•E (and never does it again for the rest of the movie).

In The Black Hole, S.T.A.R. twirls his laser gun after beating Old B.O.B. at target shooting.

Most of the characters in Versus doing this at least once after pulling a gun or before holstering it, just because it adds to the Rule of Cool.

The Quick and the Dead features an entire cast of gunfighters who twirl their guns in varying degrees of fanciness.

Kid Blue in Looper twirls his (very heavy in real-life) gun in an attempt to intimidate Joe... and nearly drops it.

"Did you shoot your other foot off?"

Django Unchained has the titular character do it a couple of times when he holsters his gun during practice. He never does it while actually drawing it, but since he only fires off one shot at a time (he's practising his quick draw,) the gun should still be loaded, making it a pretty bad idea. However, Django is described in-universe as having "a flair for the dramatic", and since the film uses, deconstructs or parodies so many classic Western tropes, this one could hardly not be used at some point.

The Office (US): When Dwight is told that he can't wear a gun in a holster in the office, he twirls the gun and it discharges putting a hole in the floor and deafening Andy in one ear.

Sammy Davis Jr. could spin two guns while singing. Danny John-Jules references this as an inspiration for the Red Dwarf example above.

Sledge Hammer! has the title character do this a lot, including once after giving a kid a lecture on playing with guns.

The West Wing: In "We Killed Yamamoto", after some time at the shooting range Simon Donovan (Mark Harmon)twirls his pistol, a .357 magnum, and sticks it down the front of his pants ... and promptly pulls it out again when he feels what the barrel of a pistol feels like after its just been fired.

Revolver Ocelot of Metal Gear does this, seeing as how his weapon of choice is a single action revolver. He does it during his entire introductory speech in Metal Gear Solid game, and in MGS3 he's seen twirling his original service pistol, and a crossbow at one point, and then with three pistols at the same time in some crazy Up to Eleven variant of Russian Roulette. Before his boss battle he does a complicated series of tricks with a revolver in each hand.

In The Twin Snakes remake, Ocelot twirls his weapon with his off hand after his other hand gets sliced off by the Ninja. However, he ends up dropping the gun — then picking it up quickly and pointing it at Snake.

In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Ocelot uses his twirling guns for a practical purpose: to protect himself from a swarm of hornets. He spins them as they fly at him and they fall down dead.

Snake can do it also, but only with the Single Action Army revolver, and not to the same impressive extent as Ocelot.

If you do that in first person view while fighting Ocelot, depending on how well you did it, he will either mock you you, or be impressed. Either way, he'll start doing it, leaving him open to attack.

In Spyro 3. Certain cowboy-themed enemies spin and flip their weapons... which serves no purpose but to give the player an opportunity to attack.

One very common enemy (a cowboy themed semi-Elite Mook) in Viewtiful Joe does this, as does recurring Miniboss the Joker.

In Knights of the Old Republic, and the sequel, pressing the x key (PC default) or Y button (X-Box) outside of combat with a pistol causes the character to do this. Equipped akimbo too, but with a different animation.

Vincent's attack animation with pistol's also contains this. Justified, in that he needs to spin the gun to re-arm the hammer mechanism since his claw like left hand is too bulky. It works fine for handling the pump action on his shotguns however.

There's also the final flourish in the synchronized marching mini game, where Cloud's sword twirl is recreated with a Mook rifle.

The Heavy Weapons Guy in Team Fortress 2 does it with a shotgun... Although to him a shotgun is practically the size of a handgun.

There's also a popular glitch that allows him to twirl his Gatling gun. Makes you wonder what they put in that sandvich ...

The Scout does this in reverse when reloading his pistol, pointing the barrel downwards before removing the magazine and then twirling it the rest of the way after he's replaced it.

The Engineer does this in his taunt for the Pistol and the Wrangler, complete with blowing the smoking barrel out. The above mentioned glitch lets him twirl his own shotgun in the same way...only Engie ISN'T so big his shotgun looks like a handgun in his hands!

In both of the Gungrave games, leaving Beyond the Grave idle for a bit and he'll twirl his dual-handguns as an idle animation. He also does it at the start of each level ("KICK THEIR ASS!") as he draws them.

Devil May Cry 4 features Dante twirling his dual pistols Ebony & Ivory prior to some rapid-fire action with a move called "Honeycomb." Nero is also shown twirling his massive Blue Rose revolver when putting it away after firing in cutscenes.

The two main characters that use pistols as their default weapons in the western themed third person shooter Red Dead Revolver twirl their guns dramatically during the loading screens.

One of these characters is a professional shootist and sharpshooter in a circus and the other is a well-written version of the classic western hero archetype. The characters actually perform complicated gun-twirling routines (the hero with a single, large colt and the shootist with two smaller revolvers) during these loading "screens", and the routines change as you progress through the game. Red Dead Revolver, as a result, had arguably the single best and most entertaining load screens in the history of video games.

Red Dead Redemption also features John Marston doing it whenever he shoots up an opponent in a duel. Granted, by that point he has usually fired off every bullet in his gun anyway, so at least he doesn't need to worry about shooting anyone.

For the sawed-off shotguns in the Marathon series, this is the standard method of reloading. The exact mechanism for this is Handwaved as being "too complex for [the player's] mind to understand".

Fox McCloud does this when finishing up his B special in Super Smash Bros. Melee, whether after one or more shots. Don't most blasters lack even a trigger guard (which might be useful)? However, in the Super Smash Bros. universe, his own blaster shots cannot hurt him, and by default don't hurt his teammates either.

One of Sly Cooper's ancestors, Tennessee "Kid" Cooper, does this in one of the game series' Cutscenes.

In Advent Rising, this is how the character reloads his guns. All his guns. Yes, even the rocket launchers.

In an homage to the motorcycle ride in Terminator 2, Alex Mason flip-cocks an 1887 Winchester during the escape from Vorkuta. He manages to fire two shots from the single-shot weapon before he has to reload.

Twirling is an idle animation for the protagonist of Saints Row, and how he reloads akimbo firearms.

Done in the first two Fallout games whenever a character holsters a handgun—or an SMG, in some cases.

In Fallout: New Vegas, you meet Joshua Graham (the Burned man) in the Honest Hearts expansion with him doing this while preparing some Colt M1911s. Oddly, his twirling of the guns is done in a very safe way - he ejects the magazine and locks the slide before giving the gun a half-twirl to check the barrel, then twirls it back and reloads the gun once he's satisfied. Have a look.

In addition, the 1911 has a grip safety- it literally can't be fired with just a finger on the trigger.

Manosuke Naitou (Horace Knightley in the fan translation) of Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is a master of this. If you call him on a lie he catches himself mid-twirl and fires a round near his face. During his breakdown he tries to twirl his pistol increasingly fast before throwing it and everything in his pockets in the air and it all comes crashing down on his head.

Used in Gears of War on two weapons. The first is the Gnasher shotgun where after a non-active reload animation they spin it by the lever. In the active reload however they forgo the flair entirely to get back to shooting faster. The second one is the Boltok revolver in Gears 2 and onward with the weapon specific execution. The character grabs the gun by the barrel, whacks the victim across the back of the skull, then spins it on their finger to return it to shooting position. More forgivable since executions are intended to be Awesome, but Impractical.

In Tales of Vesperia, Patty Fleur does this before using her Variable Trigger arte. You can delay the attack by making her twirl her pistol longer, which also makes it stronger.

In Borderlands and Borderlands 2, characters wielding pistols will twirl them as they switch to a different weapon. Marshal Friedman spins his own revolver a few times after using it to execute a murderer.

Despite being perfectly able to wield two revolvers with the precision and effectiveness as John Preston, Max Payne does not twirl his weapons.

The Kusagari Kid from the Wii exclusive Red Steel 2 twirls his revolver (his first and main firearm) when drawing and holstering it. Considering he's a wide-brimmed hat, duster coat wearing samurai/outlaw/cowboy, this is hardly surprising.

In Guild Wars 2, idle characters wielding a pistol in the main hand will do this.

In Super Robot Wars Compact 2 and Original Generation, this is justified with the Weiss Ritter and it's Oxtongue Launchernote later upgraded into the Rein Weiss Ritter and the Howling Launcher, which must perform this in order to switch firing modes. Of course, Excellen (it's pilot and an extremelycheerful sniper) likes to put a lot more flair into it.

Your player character in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat does this when pulling out any pistol equipped in the weapon slot. This includes even the Hand CannonDesert Eagle. Although it is uncommon, NPCs can be seen twirling their pistols when idle and provided they do not have a rifle/shotgun/machine gun equipped (often when they get wounded severely in a fight with other NPCs and/or mutants and their main gun is taken away either by you or another NPC, as well as offering to revive them with a medkit).

Before Erron, Stryker's Victory Pose in Mortal Kombat 3 involved him firing his gun in the air, then twirling it on his finger before putting it back in his holster and crossing his arms. How this guy became a cop in the first place is anyone's guess.

Jagi in Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage will twirl his Sawn Off Shotgun on a finger as part of his victory/idle animation. As those things are heavy and poorly balanced for spinning, it's anyone's guess how he manages without removing a finger or two.

Resident Evil 5 has the player fight Albert Wesker on a couple of occasions. He'll sometimes pull out his Samurai Edge handgun to shoot at Chris or Sheva, after which he'll put it away while twirling it.

Overwatch has Tracer who does this when she reloads her Pulse Pistols.

One of Mc Cree's emotes is a showy display of Gun Twirling. He'll also give his revolver a quick twirl when activating his Ultimate.

Battlefield Hardline has gun twirling as part of one of its Easter EggUnorthodox Reload animations with a ~0.01% chance of occurring. The .410 Jury revolver's easter egg has the user eject the spent casings, then start twirling the gun about their index finger while flicking shells into empty chambers with their other hand, including one shell which is flicked the wrong way and wraps around the screen to enter a chamber backwards.

Arytom in Metro 2033 twirls his revolvers as an Idle Animation. Seeing how he's willing to toss around a fully loaded and very shoddily built submachinegun high enough to daze him when it lands on his head, this hardly comes as a surprise.

In Suicide for Hire, Hunter does this. When Arcturus tells him to stop, he says he has it under control; and nearly shoots Codename Rudolph in the head just seconds after.

In Cassiopeia Quinn, Zeke-the-Cyborg-Space-Cowboy (most of time played completely straight, including the accent) spins Laser!Revolvers around his fingers while commenting on how ridiculous it is ("Won't help ya shoot").

Whateley Universe: As usual for Gun Tropes in this series, this is treated seriously: one of the first things Gunny Bardue sees when he is on campus the first time is a JROTC cadet pulling off stunts like this, in front of a bathroom mirror. He proceeds to rip the student a new one over it:

“Cadet Captain Rogers, what is your malfunction that you are disgracing the uniform of my beloved Marine Corps? Did your mother drop you on that pointed head of yours? Did you not eat enough Ho-hoes before you decided to embarrass the uniform of my Marine Corps by playing with your weapon in, of all places, the head? What excuses do you have for this outrage, knuckle dragger?!"

Web Video

Critical Role: The first thing Scanlan does when he gets his hands on Dr. Ripley's gun is to twirl it, which promptly results in the rest of the group deciding it's a bad idea to allow him to handle a firearm.

Hank in The Venture Bros. twirls a stapler in this fashion while helping Brock put up Christmas decorations.

In the King of the Hill episode "Soldier of Misfortune" Dale talks about a phony story about how he supposedly performed a hit on a man to his gun club. Upon finishing his story he twirls the pistol he had used to tell the story; he ends up dropping the gun and it discharges, hitting a cash register.

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